Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins (read any book .TXT) 📕

“Breathe. Take a deep breath. I’m not going anywhere.”

Helena peeked her head into the bedroom, and Hallow immediately buried her face again.

“What’s going on?”

“Helena, please get out. I’m trying to see what’s going on with your cousin.”

Helena entered the bedroom, shut the door behind her, and stood in the corner.

“You are so hardheaded,” Josephine said.

“I wanna know what’s going on.”

“She’s been hurt, that’s what. And I’m trying to see what’s going on.”

“Been hurt? Been hurt? What about me? I’m the one who’s been more hurt than anyone else up in here, and y’all treat me like some throwaway kid.”

“Is there some competition for hurt that I don’t know about? Is that why you play those cruel games with Hallow, so someone can hurt just like you do? You know, Helena, just because someone heals doesn’t mean that they don’t feel pain. We all carry something.”

For the first time that Helena could recall, she could not get the last word, because Josephine was right. Helena felt a rush every time she slapped and pushed Hallow. Redness, scratches, bruises delighted Helena whenever she saw them emerge on Hallow’s skin before they disappeared all over again. But now, in this moment, when Josephine exposed her deepest motivations for why she did what she did, she was filled with remorse.

“I’m sorry, Hallow,” Helena said. “I’m sorry.” She opened the door and backed out of the room, and it wasn’t until the door shut again that Hallow sat upright.

“Now back to where we were,” Josephine said. “Maman did something. What did she do? Show you off? Burn you?”

Hallow’s pupils dilated.

“Yeah, did you know she was gonna do that?”

“Sooner or later.”

“But why?”

Josephine shrugged her shoulders. “Because it’s the family way. She . . . is trying to appeal to other people, I guess.”

“But I don’t like it.”

Josephine replied, “I don’t like it either.”

Over the next few weeks, a transformation had overtaken the Melancon home. Helena became withdrawn but made more of an effort to be kinder to Hallow by allowing her to play in her hair or regale her with stories underneath their blankets with a flashlight at night. Then, without warning, Helena would withdraw again, apologizing hours or days later for her moods. She was still trying to find her own way like any teenager would, and, as such, her temperament and behavior were often unpredictable. But since that talk with Josephine, Helena worked to be gentler with Hallow and swore never to play games with her again. In spite of Helena’s fickleness, that promise was the only constant she honored.

Josephine was overjoyed while Maman was annoyed, because she did not want the two girls to become too close to each other. Hallow was the successor, and Helena was not. As such, Maman would allow Helena to roam outside unaccompanied while forbidding Hallow to trail after her older cousin. But whenever Helena would return, she would always be carrying some book, pamphlet, or magazine to entertain both her and Hallow. It was during this time that in her private moments, Helena collected mental notes not only of Hallow’s improved mood but her own as well. For those few weeks, everything felt all right, even as the cracks in the walls continued to grow and the holes in the ceiling became more cavernous. Helena felt so good that she wondered if that goodness could extend to other people and places and be of use in ways that possibly transcended what she could do with her caul. Sometimes she ran her fingers along the deep, permanent scars and fragments of the caul left in a few spots on her skin and did not cry with the memory of the accident. She began to interpret them all as a topography of a body that was truly hers. So now what was she going to do with this new body, this new life?

Ever since Landon set up a computer in the corridor adjacent to the dining room, Helena had spent hours researching and cataloguing fall clothes and different kinds of school supplies at night and came upon an institution in an ad on some teenager-geared website: the Spence School, an all-girls’ private school based in the Upper East Side. When Helena brought up Spence as a potential place to be schooled, its prestige and location appealed to Maman. She assumed the students were more disciplined and better behaved than those at public schools. Although Helena was of no use to the family caul business, Maman didn’t want there to be any chance of her being fully stripped. Whatever caul she had left could be easily covered with regular clothes, either for classes or PE. Besides, being at an all-girls’ school like Spence removed the worry of curious boys. Whatever slight Helena felt from being seen as damaged disappeared when she was granted permission to attend.

Throughout the summer, Helena watched movies focusing on high school, organized her journals, and created color codes and legends according to her classes. The more summer progressed, the more time she focused on actual school, and the less time she had for Hallow. Hallow was doing everything she could to get her attention. She tried to make conversation with Josephine and Maman, but the exchanges never lasted for long. She arrived at a heartbreaking conclusion one evening at dinner as the first weeks of Helena’s school were underway: Hallow had nothing worthwhile to say. As Helena enthusiastically spoke of all the courses she was taking and the extracurricular activities that she’d participate in, Hallow shrank, unable to do anything but nod, smile, and say, “Tell me more.” Hallow’s homeschooling didn’t compare to Helena’s real schooling, with other kids, events, teachers, and the outside. When Landon came to visit one evening in late September, Hallow realized just how much was changing.

He tiptoed up the stairs and knocked three times on the door. Josephine was wearing a sheer pink slip and sauntered across the room with a perfume bottle in hand to spray both her neck and